Extending the Camera Experience with a Lens

New to Windows Phone 8 is a type of camera app known as a lens. A lens is launched from the built-in camera app and provides a camera experience like that of the built-in camera app, but allows you to provide your own custom viewfinder and to extend and enhance the camera experience. A lens may provide a unique experience for viewing or editing photography, or it may be a gateway to an entirely different experience, such as a language translator that recognizes text and translates it to another language.

A lens is selected via the lenses button in the built-in camera app (see Figure 21.6).

FIGURE 21.6 Lens button navigates to the Lens Picker page.

The lens picker displays a list of installed lens apps and a link to the Marketplace, where the user may download other lens apps. When a user taps a lens in the lens picker, the corresponding app is launched via a deep link URI. The deep link URI targets the corresponding app and includes an Action querystring variable with the value ViewfinderLaunch to indicate that the app is to be launched as a lens.